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Old 12-11-2012, 02:30 AM   #1
Vynticator
 
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Default What's with the modesty about stats?

Having read quite a few threads about real world stats, I find myself a bit puzzled by what seems to be the prevailing wind in Stats theory on these forums.

GURPS Raw have human stats up to 20, but ST can go higher in an unspecified manner. But on the forums, it seems as if even conceiving of a character with a stat higher than 14, 15 at a push, is a step into super-munchkin world.

I read someone suggesting Leonardo Da Vinci had IQ around 16, the other day. Now, if we take the rules as written, we surely have to imagine a scale that does use a wider spread of stats. If people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Einstein, Socrates, Shakespeare, Darwin (maybe?) - didn't have IQ at 20 or nearly there, then who did? These guys changed human history with their thinking, often across a huge range of fields or integrating many different intellectual pursuits.

Likewise, if world class combatants or acrobats don't have DX 20, what is the meaning of having it there as a human maximum?

That line of thinking just seems odd to me. I don't object to saying 'my game is embedded in harsh realism and I will stat cap at 14 for PCs' at all, it's the idea that the most renowned figures in human history had peak stats at 16 or so.
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Old 12-11-2012, 02:44 AM   #2
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

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Originally Posted by Vynticator View Post
GURPS Raw have human stats up to 20, but ST can go higher in an unspecified manner. But on the forums, it seems as if even conceiving of a character with a stat higher than 14, 15 at a push, is a step into super-munchkin world.
GURPS RAW is meant to handle any playing style from painstaking simulationism to all-out cinematicism. Depending on which style you want, you make different choices about which traits are appropriate for characters and how high Attributes can be. At the point where a few weeks of training suffice to make a character an instant world-class expert in a new field and even without any training or study he can be better than professionals at what they do, it's a sign that he's living in a cinematic world, not the real one.

That's not necessarily bad. Plenty of people want to consume fiction set there and play games there too. But it's not an accurate reflection of the real world, which is where real, historical people lived.

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Originally Posted by Vynticator View Post
I read someone suggesting Leonardo Da Vinci had IQ around 16, the other day.
In a game that's set in cinematic Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci might have IQ 20. In a game meant to be set in a realistic simulation of actual Renaissance Italy, he has lower IQ, perhaps some Talents and points in a wide range of skills.

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Originally Posted by Vynticator View Post
Now, if we take the rules as written, we surely have to imagine a scale that does use a wider spread of stats. If people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Einstein, Socrates, Shakespeare, Darwin (maybe?) - didn't have IQ at 20 or nearly there, then who did? These guys changed human history with their thinking, often across a huge range of fields or integrating many different intellectual pursuits.
Fictional human polymaths have IQ 20. Real human polymaths have high IQ, but not so high that their untrained defaults with all IQ-based skills are equal or higher to the skills of actual professionals or even experts in those fields.

And a lot of the names you mention are people famous for their exceptional skill in a particular field that in GURPS is fairly narrow, which means that they are best modelled with Talents and/or points in the skill that governs their area of expertise. Do you believe that Shakespeare, Einstein or Darwin had skill 14+ in all IQ-based skills, including Politics, Strategy, History (every single speciality), Law (all), Engineering (all) and all Influence skills, making them an expert at everything? The evidence of their lives doesn't support this.

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Likewise, if world class combatants or acrobats don't have DX 20, what is the meaning of having it there as a human maximum?
So that the game can model humans in cinematic worlds, as well as humans in realistic worlds.
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Old 12-11-2012, 03:25 AM   #3
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

Talents can be away of bumping up skills so that there is a huge bonus to underlying stats.

I think this is a better representation that just brute/raw stat power.
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Old 12-11-2012, 03:29 AM   #4
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius in painting as in engineering and science. Perhaps the most poyhedric genius we can think of. Pico della Mirandola could remeber for his entire life any book he readed, word by word. John Von Neumann, at six years of ages, could read a random numbers page for few minutes and after this repeat it wothout an error.

Einstein studied in old school universities, where a bit of every science was teached to students. Yet, when Einstein spoke about biology, he used to tell oddities. He simply didn't know that issue. And I think Einstein hasn't Machinist skill 15, Acting, Streetwise, Fast-talk, Merchant and Paking at level 15 (that is, a super-professionist), Physician at level 13, Strategy at level 14, Forgery 14 and First Aid 16. So, Einstein hasn't that attribute of GURPS that is IQ 20.
IQ 20 definitely is an over-the-top score even in a cinematic game. Nor da Vinci, della Mirandola, Einstein or Von Neumann are correctly simulated by IQ 20.

The same goes for DX.

High HT is good for gamistic concerns, but it's totally unrealistic. Even a score of 13 produces odd results in a large set of situations and hazards.

ST 20 lifting are on the top of today's human performances. Athletes showing this level of performance aren't humans, because their body is definitely super-human due to pharmacy. So ST 20 already is a non-human score.
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Old 12-11-2012, 04:59 AM   #5
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

Familiarity penalties can easily be as brutal as -6, making those level 15 defaults into level 9s.
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Old 12-11-2012, 06:20 AM   #6
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

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Familiarity penalties can easily be as brutal as -6, making those level 15 defaults into level 9s.
True enough, but even with those, I'd argue that even the most impressive polymath in real history would not qualify for IQ 20. The problem isn't just with defaults, it is also how easily skills can be learnt. In just a month or so of study, an IQ 20 character can become one of the best in the world at any mental skill he chooses.

High IQ is realistic for certain gifted individuals in history. Caesar and Napoleon, for example, were geniuses in multiple areas, even going so far as to surpass professionals after only minimal learning time in areas as diverse as religious esoteria, poetry, lawmaking and city planning. But they can still be represented with IQ 13-16, as well as perhaps appropriate Talents*.

It isn't automatically implausible for very quick-thinking, intuitive person with excellent memories and judgment to master an IQ skill at a professional level in just the short time it takes to shed the unfamiliarity penalties that apply to a given task. As it happens, there is an enormous variation in real-world problem-solving ability, learning speed and judgment, even more so than in the somewhat limited subset of intelligence that Intelligence Quotients measure. But except in cinematic universes, that variation doesn't extend quite up to IQ 20.

*Especially for Napoleon, who was broadly competent and inspired, but clearly even better at such skills as Administration, Leadership, Strategy, Tactics, etc. than he was at IQ-skill in general.
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Old 12-11-2012, 06:50 AM   #7
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

The kind of people who go down in history as brilliant geniuses are the people with high levels of Talent, Charisma, and maybe Reputation (Really Smart Guy). There may well have been people out there with IQ 20, but they most likely took some crippling mental disadvantages to pay for it and spent their lives working quietly behind the scenes.
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Old 12-11-2012, 12:51 PM   #8
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Familiarity penalties can easily be as brutal as -6, making those level 15 defaults into level 9s.
Skills used at default do not take familiarity penalties (cite).
This was discussed at length with regards to Driving, and eventually Gollum asked Kromm about it:

"I have submitted our conclusion (20-50 hours of training and you have got default +2) to Dr Kromm and his reply is: "no".

There is no familiarity with default. And no malus for unfamiliarity with default. When you have the default level, you only have the default level. Familiarity or unfamiliarity is only taken into account for trained characters."



So an IQ 20 character will be, by default, an expert at every mental skill, save for Very Hard ones, where he or she will merely be akin to a trained professional. This is appropriate for some characters (and, indeed, formed the basis for the protagonist of a 90s tv show), but does not appear to describe any real-world humans.
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Old 12-11-2012, 01:47 PM   #9
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

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So an IQ 20 character will be, by default, an expert at every mental skill, save for Very Hard ones, where he or she will merely be akin to a trained professional.
Hardly. An IQ 20 character is probably moving in a world with a lot of IQ 16-17 characters, who have 12/16+ points invested in their primary skills. The IQ 20 person will be, at best, a talented amateur at every mental skill that allows an IQ default, and can relatively cheaply (1-4 cp investment) compete with experts. Which is perfectly reasonable.
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Old 12-11-2012, 09:40 PM   #10
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Default Re: What's with the modesty about stats?

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Familiarity penalties can easily be as brutal as -6, making those level 15 defaults into level 9s.
Those familiarity penalties can easily look like GM whim, or even outright GM hostility, from the perspective of a player.
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